The problem with professions is that they offer next to nothing. You get a small bonus for keeping your professions up to date (which can make you feel you need to have the optimal professions not to gimp yourself) and then nothing. You can make some gold through professions by making vanity items but you cannot actually make decent items; the few raid-level items that can be crafted require mats you can only get in raids or so expensive that they suborn any profit you could have made; they aren't exactly hard to learn as recipes either.

You make most of your gold from professions by making consumables like gems, flasks, potions, enchants, ect. The things people have to buy more than once. You also save gold by being able to make stuff for yourself.

Yea 2 hours mabey if your not affected with Crz there is always 3-5 people taking converted heros in icecrown

could easily move up to the cultists with the cauldrons... or... over the mountain and kill those 3 camps of cultists west of argent tourney...

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Watched my roommate take Enchanting from 1-600 in a matter of 36 hrs, did spend some gold on the AH, farmed the rest of the mats through lower dungeons (being a tailor helped make the cloth into smashables too), so no, it isn't hard. The "hard" part you speak of is the time-investment in farming materials. That isn't hard, it's a commitment, and a pretty lax one.

Farming Cloth: Pick a humanoid-populated instance of the right level range, profit. Northrend's necessity of Frostweave to reach 425 (and open Cata mats) sucks though.
Farming Leather: A number of instances do have a skinnable population to them, just not as many as cloth-dropping. Best to find a zone with a high beast-type density to it.
Farming Ore/Herbs: Look at all the zones with your resource type, and pick the one least likely to be quested in. There is naturally certain zones most people prefer.

36 hours is a long time. i did enchanting 1-600 the other day in maybe 6 hours tops

One mine or herb node 'can' give that many, but doesn't always. As far as mining, it's actually pretty rare to see that many.

And the difference is while the act of killing / skinning does take longer, there's also a LOT more opportunities for players to collect those skins in any given area.

Folks seem to forget that the intent of professions. You're supposed to pick a pair @ level 10, and level them up with your character. That's why zones have the drops they do, that coincide generally with about how far along you should be in your given professions. Same goes for fishing to an extent.

I realize that most folks simply prefer to AH their way through a profession at max level, but it's hard to take complaints seriously when this is viewed as some inconvenience.

That's the problem of LW, it just doesn't work at all. I tried this, gave up after going back to Feralas at lvl 50 and farming Yetis for Thick Leather for 2 hours and not getting anywhere close to the next leather level anyway.

All of the professions are more of a pain in the ass if you don't lvl them while you are questing/dungeon running at their lvl also. Even with that they are all pretty easy and quick to lvl. LW being one of the easier ones, you go to a place with a ton of animals and slaughter them all for their hides, the faster you kill and skin the faster they respawn it works out really well.

I just leveled 1-600 LW and it is completely broken when compared to other professions. The amount of materials you need at some of the sub 300 levels are absurd. Having to kill 20 mobs for 1 skill up is no where near in line with picking a flower or 2.

Most of the sub 300 recipes need to have their material reqs cut in half, or there needs to be a lot more multi skill recipes.

Its not really broken, its just the same as it was in vanilla. If it was broken it would require very rare or expensive mats to reach certain levels like enchanted leather or core leather. The only problem is it takes too much leather and gathering leather is arduous. I leveled both at the same time back in BC and skinning went by much faster than LW leaving you to skin mobs that dont give skill ups for a long time to get enough leather to get that one skill up.

One thing that should always be done now is leveling your profs during the Darkmoon Faire. Plan out when you will hit a road bump in the leveling like where the mats arent available or really expensive and do the +5 skill quest.

That's the problem of LW, it just doesn't work at all. I tried this, gave up after going back to Feralas at lvl 50 and farming Yetis for Thick Leather for 2 hours and not getting anywhere close to the next leather level anyway.

This was pretty much my point. Most professions are in a pretty good place. LW? Trying to keep that leveled as you level... well, I hope you like grinding skinnable mobs instead of questing or dungeons.

When asked about the role of women in video games, Samus Aran said, "..." - and then she blew up the planet. AGAIN.

All of the professions are more of a pain in the ass if you don't lvl them while you are questing/dungeon running at their lvl also. Even with that they are all pretty easy and quick to lvl. LW being one of the easier ones, you go to a place with a ton of animals and slaughter them all for their hides, the faster you kill and skin the faster they respawn it works out really well.

LW is probably the hardest prof to level with engineering and tailoring coming next. BS requires a lot of ore but not many extra mats like gems, cloth, elementals that are gathered by miners.

Gathering profs just take time and Insc, Alch, Ench(if you have a tailor, BS) are super easy.

A profession is supposed to take time. You either have to take the time and gather whatever is needed yourself or buy it off auction house. The latter one would take far less time, but would cost way more. Those who wants to become 600 in X profession with only a days worth of work, only has one option, and that is auction house. I've leveled far more profession than I have characters, and it takes time and money. And it is supposed to.

I really don't like the trend where people wants stuff handed to them with the least amount of effort. skilling Blacksmithing were and still is (despite the Ghost Iron change) a hard and costly profession to skill. I've done this thrice, one of those being less than a month ago. The same thing goes for pretty much every single profession as well, except for the fact that I'm able to earn cash during levelling the other ones.

Again, professions are supposed to take time. If you take the word 'profession' and put it out into the real world, it would take years of training and practice in order to proceed and get better at X profession. And no, Leatherworking is not broken. I would consider it one of the easiest to skill, as leather is rather cheap and/or to gather. There are far more skinners out there than there are LW'ers. In regards to Tailoring, I've hit the wall there a couple times when it comes to the rather large amount of cloth needed, but it is perfectly doable. Despite the need of 1000 or so frostweave cloth, you'll be able to farm that within an hour or two depending on your class and if you have the 2x increased amount of cloth thingy.

As an example. Skilling 1-300 back in Vanilla took ages. Far longer than it takes now. You have a ton of possibilities that you didn't or had limited access to back in Vanilla. Just the addition of flying in Azeroth is a major boost.

I've never found it easier to level professions. I tend to follow the guides easily available by googling.

The ability to follow a guide has exactly zero to do with the fact that it takes 3-4 times as long to gather, say, 200 leather from same-level mobs as it does same-level herbs or ore.

Like I said... most professions are in a good place. I disagree with the idea that ALL professions need to be easier. But LW needs to be brought into line with other professions, or skinning needs to be brought into line with other gathering professions.

When asked about the role of women in video games, Samus Aran said, "..." - and then she blew up the planet. AGAIN.

I feel you! I made a monk, picked Skinning/Leatherworking and it totally slows me down... I love leveling my professions while leveling my character, so it's kinda realistic. But thats not the case with Leatherworking. I have all the heirlooms, plus enlightenment, plus guild perks and there is no way I can level my professions at the same pace.
I am 42 lvl, and still trying to farm Heavy Leather in Feralas.... I have abandoned my leveling so I can farm 100-120 mobs just to get LW to 180!
But lets face it, thats how lw works. But right now I think I'm gonna skip it, level up a bit and then return because I can't do both right now!

PS. I have leveled everything else to 600 except Inscription and Leatherworking... I have to say, Alchemy was the easiest by far.

If you farm the necessary leather and level LW up in two hours you really should fill us all in on your secrets instead of dropping in random asinine comments. Don't get this mentality that everything has to both be tedious and take up plenty of time to be deemed worthwhile. I don't know about anyone else, but I pay my sub to have some fun and leveling LW in it's current form is only fun to a sado-masochist. I have a job to give me my fill of tedious, time involving tasks and it pays me real money to boot. This is just one of these subjects which attract the "I did it the mind-numbingly boring way and so should you" people who forget games are played for fun.

Hello I just started lvlning my leatherworking on a not so populated realm, which means I can't just go to the AH and buy out all of the mats I need in order to level my proffesion fast.
No blizzard wants you to go out and play their game for countless hours playing like a bot. It has become really really to absurd and really not fun at all.
I have spent countless of hours to grind my leatherworking up to 300 out of 600 and when I got to 300 I quit because it is simply way too lame.
Fix this blizzard. Seriously this is one of the reasons ppl are quiting this game.

This can't be real, this guy has to be trolling...

STRESS
The confusion caused when one's mind
overrides the body's basic
desire to choke the living shit out of
some jerk who desperately needs it